


The Star

by orphan_account



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, she fell from the sky and was found on the roof. No one knew where she came from. No one knew why her eyes were a different color than everyone else's, or why she had flashes of strange memories, or why she was so obsessed with a stolen piece of paper. No one knew her destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In progress.

My ear is pressed against the door, and if I listen closely, I can hear voices, faint whispers from inside.

_"Security breach...library..."_

_"Have you done an inventory count?...informative..."_

_"...nothing seems to have been taken...so far..."_

That's not true. And I know it's not true because I have a piece of paper in my pocket. A piece of paper that I took from the library. As the book crumbled beneath my fingers, I tucked the paper in my pocket.

I take it out and read it again. This past hour, I must've read it at least fifty times. Not in public, of course. Paper is forbidden to all except priests and librarians. Even children learn to read and write by etching marks on clay tablets. But in hidden corners, like my room and the storage room of the market. And, of course, here. In Marks' mansion. I really should be cleaning and arranging his things, but this paper is so much more interesting.

_Go where the golden grasses grow_

_Where the water is sweet and the river runs slow_

_Go where the tops of the pyramids show_

_That is where you must go._

It's organized into four lines, and it sort of rhymes. It could be poetry, I guess. But if it is, it's not very good. It's repetitive and the rhymes are funny, and the rhythm is all wrong. We are learning about poetry in school. It's not like anything I've ever read before.

The other option is that it's some sort of riddle. Someone told me a tale of riddles long ago. But like many things, I have forgotten it. It has been lost in a sea of memories.

Then the door slams open. Marks and a man who I recognize as the mayor walk in. The mayor is holding a tablet and stylus, and he doesn't even bother to pretend he's not concealing the contents from me.

Marks stares at me. Like me, Marks has weird eyes. They are an intense yellow, like a flower, except less bright. He locks eyes with me and asks in a calm and measured voice, "What are you doing by my door?"

I realize that I still have the paper in my hand. My mind whirls, snatching on the shadow that one of the shelves cast on the wall near me. "Um...this fell behind the bookshelf. Sir," I say. "I was waiting for you so that I could give it to you."

In an instant I realize how terrible of a lie that is. He will take it from me and read it, and then he will surely know that I am the thief. My hands begin to shake, and I bite my lip, hoping in a corner of my mind that he doesn't recognize any of my nervous tics.

He holds out his hand for the paper. I give it to him. It's still crumpled from my fist. He measures it in his hand, flips it open and scans it. His eyes cross, his eyebrows knit, and then he laughs. "Who wrote this?" he chortles.

I keep my head down, respectfully.

"Must've been Dell," he says, handing the paper back to me. "This is some really terrible poetry." Dell is his incompetent son. He often criticizes Dell and complains about him to me, because I'm there and because I'm apparently too stupid to repeat what he says to anyone else. "You know where the disposal room is." He turns back to the mayor, and I hurry off, glad to have escaped.

I run to the disposal room. It's downstairs. Upstairs is beautiful. It has soaring ceilings and smooth sandstone floors. But downstairs is just utility. Hard, cold, ugly stone. And somewhere down here, in the labyrinth of doors and passageways, is Marks's safe room. The walls are triple-obsidian reinforced and apparently contain enough resources to help him and his family to survive the apocalypse. The resources include, it is rumored, an underground farm. But its location is classified.

I almost drop the paper in the lava of the disposal room, but something feels not right about it. Something is tugging me, pulling me away from the lava, and after resistance, I give in, running away from the disposal room. On my way back upstairs, I tuck the paper safely back into my jacket pocket.

Marks is talking to the mayor again. I hear their laughter from several rooms away. They are making small talk now, as those in power in this town often do. I grab my duster and pretend to be dusting.

They are walking towards me, and I can now hear the shape of words. "Dell...market..." Marks says. Dell just got a job at the market, surprising everyone in town. The mayor chortles at this, and says a few quick words that I can't here. They both laugh boisterously.

"Don't forget the bookshelves, Kaila," Marks reminds me as he passes. The mayor chuckles. They're a regular comedy duo. But I'm not in on the joke.

 

It's another hour before Marks lets me go. I run home. Alf, my town-father, is a tailor. He is mending--what is that? a shirt?--in the living room. He barely looks up as I pass. Alf doesn't like me as much as Reya does. He's not really invested in me.

I run upstairs as soon as I am out of Alf's suspicion zone and stow the paper in a locked chest beneath my bed. Then I lie down on the top of my bed. It's been a long day. And the paper. What could the little poem/riddle mean? And why does it spark memories in the back of my mind, just barely?

Then I notice the mark at the bottom. Anyone else might think it's a mistake, a slip of the pen, but it catches on something. A faint memory in my mind.

 _She is walking. There are stones beneath her feet. On a rock up ahead is the_ mark...

It means something. It's got to. Something from Before.

 

My town-mother Reya tells me the story of me less often now than she used to. Here is the part she knows:

One night, she heard cries from outside. She was in bed and didn't bother to get up at first. Suffering at that time was common, and it wouldn't do use to get up at every sign of a tear, as she puts it. But this cry had an edge to it that she couldn't ignore. So she crawled out of bed, careful not to wake my town-father Alf, and crept outside.

I was on the roof. I was small--about four, she estimates--and dirty and banged-up and bawling my eyes out.

She took me down--though she didn't know how I'd gotten up there in the first place--and washed me off and gave me a bowl of steaming-hot soup. I didn't know what to do with the spoon, she tells me. I tried to scoop it up with my hands. Finally, she just spoon-fed me. Then she put me to bed.

In the morning, she bragged to all of her neighbors about "the baby who'd fell from heaven." The gossip spread quickly, and soon it reached the people in power--the priests, the mayor, and Marks, who immediately walked in and demanded to see the baby.

She at first hid me from him but then saw no use and gave me up to him.

He took him away from her for seven days, she tells me, but then returned me on the eighth. And the world seemed new and beautiful. Because now she and Alf had a baby.

But it quickly became apparent that I was not a normal child. I was slow to follow instructions, and I would often stare into space, as if trying to remember something. These, plus my unusual eyes, made the townspeople brand me as  _weird_. And then  _stupid_. And so when I was fifteen and it was time for me to get a job on top of school, almost no one would hire me. Marks was the exception. I don't know what he saw in me, but in a few days, I was a cleaner for Marks's mansion.

Every day was the same after that. Dull labor for little pay.

But things are beginning to look up now that I have the paper. Now that I have a goal.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day I go to school. It's located in a small schoolhouse on the edge of the town closest to the forest. I almost leave the paper at home but then bring it just in case.

The room is buzzing when I get there. There was apparently an attack last night when I was asleep. It was a bad one, too: the  _cerae_ , the creatures of the night, almost killed our brave fighters. Luckily, no one ended up dead.

"Cayla had to go the hospital," reports Jena, my best--and only--friend, when I ask her what happened. "But no one was hurt. Too badly."

I am glad. The cerae will take over your mind. They will possess you and make you into one of their own if you don't fight back.

"Why didn't you hear it?" Jena asks. "It was so loud. Like: boom! Crash! Bang! Slash!" She makes wild gestures with her arms.

"I was dreaming," I say, and Jena backs off. She knows what I mean, though she's quite possibly the only one.

A few years ago, I started having dreams. Eerie, creepy dreams. I had one every few weeks. In one, someone took out their own eye and left trails hanging in the empty socket. In another, three people in quick succession fell off a cliff. They were shadowy and strange and misty, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what bothered me about them, but I thought they were from Before.

I told no one about them. That would only make them think I was stranger.

 

Today there is a lesson of some sort, but no one can concentrate. Finally, the teacher lets us all out early. We run into the sun. I yawn and stretch. Jena just stands. When she was very young, she was injured in a battle with the cerae, and she still has the scars running up her right side. Even now, she moves slower than all the other children.

As we walk back to the main village, I almost tell her about the paper, but then hesitate and instead say something else. "Jena, if you stole from Mylie, what would she do to you?" Mylie is her employer. Like Dill, Jena works at the market.

"Who's saying she'll find out?" Jena winks.

"But say you stole something, and it was...kind of valuable, and Mylie found out."

"I dunno." Jena stops walking and thinks for a moment. "She would probably fire me. And fine me. And take me to the mayor. Maybe the mayor would put me in jail. It would probably depend on how valuable it was." She walks again, then gives me a piercing look. "Keila, what did you do?"

"Nothing," I say quickly. "Marks would know in a second if anything was missing."

She holds her gaze. "You know, Keila, Marks is a powerful man. And he could maybe slip past the laws regarding punishment of employees." She turns back to the front, and speeds up a little as we walk up a small incline. "All I'm saying is, you should be careful."

This isn't like Jena to be so serious. I am guessing it's because of the attack. Must've thrown her off wack. We walk the rest of the way to her house in silence.

When we get there, she pushes open the door and walks inside. She doesn't offer me food or a place to stay like usual. She just sits down on an old pile of planks. I do the same.

"Jena..." My voice trails off into an uncomfortable silence. Finally, I pull open my jacket pocket and pull out the paper. Then I hand it to her. "I found this in Marks's house," I say.

She looks up. "You stole it, didn't you." Her voice is quietly accusatory and full of...I can't tell what. Malice? Anger? Fear? A little of each?

"Read it," I say.

She does, then folds it up and throws it at me. "Tell me you didn't steal it."

I am silenced.

Her face flushes. "Kaila, I do not believe you."

"But the paper--"

"Kaila, this is about you. You  _stole_ the paper from Marks, and..."

"But the  _paper_ \--"

"I don't care about the paper! You stole the paper and he's going to come after you and--" Her words get faster and faster, softer and softer, until she stops speaking entirely.

"Look," she says, a single tear making its way down her cheek. "I'm just scared. Because of you, and Marks, and the paper, and the attack." She blots at her face. "They said the cerae were stronger this time. They were harder to drive back."

I don't know what to say.

She raises her head and points to the paper. "Look."

On the back of the paper is a single sentence, written in a flowery script that you don't see around here anymore.  _Go north._

I look at her, and she looks back. That sentence wasn't there before. I get a fright of chills down my back, and then I raise the paper and put it in my jacket.

"Go north," I say aloud, as if trying out how the words feel in my mouth. "Yes, that's what we have to do. Go north."

 

We don't go immediately, of course. But we go upstairs, where it's safer, and we talk.

Jena is skeptical at first. Of course she is. She doesn't know about the mark, or the mysterious pull that it had in the disposal room, and I can't really explain them to her. She also believes we need to stay and protect the village. But really, I say, how much defending can we do? Two girls, one weak on one side, the other strange and not altogether trustworthy?

She is crying again when she agrees to go. Unlike me, she has roots in this town. She has family, even if it is just an older brother tasked with taking care of five younger siblings. She has other friends besides me, even if I'm the main one.


End file.
